Formula For Disaster.

When I met my soon-to-be 2nd wife (at a Johnny Johnson show at the Grand Emporium), she had been divorced for less than a year.

Prior to that, she had been married for almost 20 years to a guy who sold shady life insurance to minorities and she had 2 mostly grown kids.

When I met her she was already heavily involved with some married Mexican auto-worker who had zero credit and only dealt in cash and treated her like crap.

I rode in like Sir Galahad and “rescued” her.

[Brief recap – woman with 20 years worth of un-dealt-with baggage, obvious marriage-ending affair that she claimed wasn’t an affair but just a relationship with a friend that blossomed after the divorce which she repeatedly described as “just the two of them, against the world”. RED FLAG! RED FLAG!]

We were married on May 1st. That’s right. MAYDAY. You know, what steely-eyed fighter pilots yell into the radio when they are going down in flames. That would probably be another BIG RED FLAG.

We got married and had a kid (young Galadriel Tanqueray Onassis). All of that un-dealt-with baggage from her previous marriage got imported into and superimposed on our relationship. Things I did were always compared to things he did. Or didn't do. I had no clean slate. Ever.

After almost 10 years of marriage, she had an affair with my best friend’s older brother.

Six weeks after our divorce was final, she married him.

[Recap Redux: 20 years worth of un-dealt-with first marriage baggage + 10 years worth of un-dealt-with second marriage baggage + persistent denial about repeated infidelity = 30 years worth of psycho-bitch-from-hell dropped in the lap of an old free-spirited, ex-hippy who lived in a camper at Crystal Lakes and only worked when he felt like it. He was now forced to get a job to support his new wife so he parlayed his Vietnam era Marine service into a job as a night-shift janitor at a Post Office in KCK cleaning other people’s piss off of toilets and mopping floors all night. Soar with the eagles, dude! Soar with the fucking eagles!]

I almost felt sorry for the guy. I was sorely tempted to send him 2 cards every year on their anniversary. A sympathy card and a thank you card in the same envelope.

I predicted at the time that they would last 5 years, tops! I reached this figure using my “Marriage Half-Life” theory soon to be published in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal, “Bitter Old Vindictive Assholes” or BOVA as it’s known in the trade.


I haven’t worked out the actual formula, but it’s something about “In the absence of introspection and self-awareness, each subsequent marriage will self-destruct in just half the time of the previous marriage.” So, 1st marriage was 20 years, second marriage was 10 years, third marriage had to self destruct in 5 years. It’s just a law of nature.

I was dead-on accurate!

Things are falling apart right on schedule and in a most bizarre manner!

My ex is attending AA meetings.

Her hubby spends most of his time at home in the backyard tree house that he constructed for my daughter (probably smoking weed, based on what I know about him…and trying to stay away from his wife, based on what I know about her…I used to spend a lot of the time in the basement working on “projects”).

In a frank discussion with my daughter about the current situation, my ex told her that “if it weren’t for alcohol, your daddy and I probably would have been married forever.”

My unofficial, unvoiced response…” THANK GOD FOR ALCOHOL!! ”

Well, today it became official. My ex won the election, she is the Mayor of Splitsville! She and my daughter moved out today. The ex moved in with her daughter from the 1st marriage. For now, my daughter is with me.

I have no idea how all of this is going to shake out. All my daughter wants to do is get back to the town she has lived in since she was 3 years old. Every friend she has is 30 miles away. She was really looking forward to starting high school next year. Now, depending on where her mom finds a job, she faces the prospect of starting high school in a town yet to be determined (but probably a lot larger than what she is used to) where she doesn’t know a single soul.

Starting high school in a strange town where you don’t know anyone is a recipe for disaster. Teenagers anxious to fit in and make friends tend to make bad decisions of Biblical proportions.

So far, at 14, she is the coolest, most well-adjusted, level-headed, intelligent, skeptical, witty, charming and beautiful person I know. She gets straight A’s and has never been in any kind of trouble. She has no problem dropping friends like bad habits if they start heading down the wrong path.

I don’t want anything to fuck that up! Nothing is more important to me than my daughter, her happiness, and her future.

The ex? I could give a shit. She crapped the bed, she can wallow in it for all I care.

My only concern is for my daughter.